My goodness I feel like I’ve been a way for weeks and it’s only been two days since my last post. But that was a translation version and I haven’t had the chance to be as active as I usually am. July in Madrid is coming up. Just one day off, come to think of it. It’s been ten years since I’ve done something like that. Wonder what’s up and can come up and can happen and will. I wonder what…

The first thing they recommend on the post-operation information sheet in the section titled “Treatment” is “normal life”. Just two words to suggest I make every effort to lead a normal life. I thought of this as I sat upright in my chair and prepared myself to engage slipping a sock onto the tip of my toes. My foot, normally a close relative of mine, stared back at me as if it were on the other side of a canyon. There was no way I was going to reach it without help or bursting all the sutures in my belly. I now what the doctor’s were getting at. I really did. They didn’t want us to act like a bunch of invalids (an unfortunate term originally used for soldiers wounded in battle…if that doesn’t give you an idea of military regard for human welfare, I don’t now what does), bedridden for days on end. They wanted us to get back up on our feet and moving as quickly as possible, that’s what. But I am sorry. I have to differ. Two days before I could put on sock without the slightest problem. That was “normal life” for me. There had been a marked change in my life since then, so I was in the need of a little more information.

And that was the problem time and time again. Well-meaning people forgetting to convey to you just the kind of information you needed the most, making life exceptionally complicated. You see, no matter how hard you try to return to normal living, when they have surgically intervened in your lower abdomen, just about everything you do seems to prove that your life is far from it. Standing up, lying in bed, rolling over; trying to pick something up off the floor, reaching for a glass in the cupboard, taking a shower. And what about going to the bathroom? There was nothing normal about the fear that overcame me when I had to confront that situation. After just 24 hours I realized that very little about my life was normal anymore, so I began to wonder just what the doctors meant by that.

I said, “Dad, by this point in the summer in Madrid, it doesn’t get cloudy again until about, say, October.”

“Really!” He sounded astounded. “I didn’t know that.”

“You shouldn’t have to. No one should have to know these things about this city. But it’s pretty much a fact.” And it is. Except for the odd t-storm, and they are pretty unsual by this point, you rarely have to watch weather forecast because the first word “sunny”, you already know, and the second two words, “and hot”, are daily regulars, though the latter is often accompanied by some kind of modifier which I supposed makes it worth keeping the TV on. They’ll say things like “quite hot” or “very hot” or even “stifling hot”, and that way you know just how you are going to suffer the next day. And that is the way it stands for about ninety days.

Since this year we have finally had a real spring, so rare is this season, that I don’t think the Madrileños even noticed. It’s been great. The heat has just kicked in, and even though this is just about the right time for that to happen, it’s the talk of the town. And it brings out wonderful small talk in even the most taciturn of humans until finally someone points out that it is hot because that is what summer is like in Madrid, the way it has been for time eternal, and then everyone remarks, “yes, yes, that’s true.” And then you start it back up with the next person you run into.

People in Madrid combat the heat in a lot of different ways. One is by drinking lots of beer. And if that’s not youe thing or you aren’t old enough yet, then you slurp on a tart granizado de limón which is crushed ice drenched in natural lemonade.

But if you are not seeking a drink, and are indoors, you resort to other tactics. Tactics that have changed over the years. The Spanish traditionally loathed air conditioning, claiming it was unhealthy because it could do all sorts of dreadful things to your body. They would often tell me this while smoking a cigarette and downing a whiskey. It had a lot to do with, and this part they would often leave out, the exorbitantly high electric bills here. So, the soundly rejected the use of modern technology combat the high temperatures.

That was, of course, before they tried having AC in their houses.

Back then, the old tricks were to lower the Venetian blinds to the bottom during the day and then open the windows at night and let things cool off. In my old apartment, I used to do the same, but more as a gesture symbolizing man’s drive to change his environment rather than a true measure to alleviate the heat issue at hand. The flat was just too ill-suited for good circulation and the total lack of wind made up for the rest.

And, to be honest with you, the kind of opposite has happened to me. When I arrived over twenty years ago, I was an AC junkie just like any good American kid. I couldn’t live without getting to bed in July and needing three down blankets to make a snug cocoon with. But I am here to say that you can get unhooked. You can get off the stuff. A person doesn’t need as much AC as our bodies would have us believe.

“Bull!” say some of you. But it’s true. You can live without air conditioning, you really can. I have gotten used to it, and I don’t even like it that much the way I did in the U.S. Only on the worst nights would we resort to an electric fan.

Most times you can open your windows here without fear of being bled to death my a nest of thirsty mosquitoes. Here it’s so dry, vampirish flying insects hardly exist. Bugs in general do, with the exception of a cockroach or two. I can’t stand them and they know better than to enter my home lest they wish to be euthanized, because I tell baby, when it comes to roaches I shoot first and then ask the questions.

Ironically, this apartment actually has its own air conditioner mounted on the wall. It was one of the eye-catchers when I took the place. And here it is, June 22, and I’ve only used it twice. Part of the reason is that it doesn’t work very well. At least it doesn’t seem to. It gets the air out and cools the temperatures, not to point where you require calling for a rescue helicopter to pull you out of the frozen living room alive. In fact, most Americans would laughed at it. “That’s not air conditioning! I know moths at home which do a better job keeping a room cool.”

I also like to swab the wooden floor with a bit of water. That also helps chill it down. It has that Old World environmentally friendly feel to it. Something green and economic at the same time. “People here have been doing this since the days of the Phoenicians, Dad.” Of course, I have no idea is if this is true, but it sounds good and is a good excuse.

To which my father always makes one of those appeals for me to finally return home to have a reunion with my culture. “I think it would do you some good.”

But I think I’m all right for the moment. It’s morning time. I think I’m going to open the window and let some fresh air in.

Jeeze if I had only known. Right there on my website, at the bottom of one of my posts was an ad for jobs in Spain. Not just a few jobs, but thousands of them! Where had they been hiding all these months (excuse me, years) as the unemployment rate soared to over 20%, the highest in the European Union? In my own backyard! And not any ordinary jobs, but those offering 80k and up. Spain’s per capita income averages around $30,000 (in the U.S. it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $45,000), so boy that offer looks enticing. All I have to do is get those thousands over to my page and we’ll go from there!

Yeah, right!

Can’t even tell you what jobs they offer, ‘cause that would be cheating on my Google Ad contract! Oh well, blogging can be the cruellest stuff.

By about 8:30 that morning I was ready to go home. All I needed was the doctor’s OK. That was the problem.

Doctor’s are certainly some of the hardest working people I know. In some places they may have a reputation for strolling around the golf course all day, but I tell you, the ones I know spend half their lives at the hospital. They just never come to your room went you want them too.

I got a few kind visits from the nurses but that was the sum of it. Nurses can do a lot, but they can’t get you out of the hospital. Finally, around 12:30, a doctor whom I had never seen in my life burst into the room and said, “Brian?”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling?” he was a young-looking man, with an air of a young-looking Antonio Banderas. Maybe it was the way he let his hair fling back.

“Fine.”

“Good. You’re going home.”

I blinked several times. That was the end of his examination? I mean, in a sense, that was what I was expecting him to say, and that was what I wanted to them to say, but I was kind of hoping for something more thorough before they let me loose out in the cruel world with just a bandage on my belly and a handful of ibuprofen. Didn’t he want to at least take a look at the wound to make sure it wasn’t festering or something like that? Didn’t he want to ask a question like what my favorite soccer team was so I didn’t say something suspicious like Barcelona?

“All right,” I agreed. “But I have some questions.”

“That’s fine. Let me get the release form ready and when I come back you can ask all the questions you want.”

He did come back and I did make all sorts of enquiries but once again this is where the medicine world tends to get kind of vague on you. Maybe it’s because they think you are too stupid to understand them, which is possible, or they can’t be bothered, but something keeps them from making you privy to vital information.

“Just take care of yourself. And don’t overdo it. Especially with weights.”

“Could you be more specific? Can I go bowling, per chance?”

“Nope.”

“Kick box?” I was kidding.

“Not for a few weeks.”

Not for a few weeks. I couldn’t even urinate with any ease, and the man was giving me a month before I could break a person’s arm? Hmm.

“You can pick up light things, like a laptop. Just don’t pick up babies and things like that.”

And things like that. Check.

“What about my medical leave? How long?”

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

He chuckled. “Listen, here things are done differently. If you work for someone else…two months. If you are self-employed, two days. Get it?”

I did, and I found it amusing, but not especially informative. “And what if I’m a teacher?”

“At least 15 days. And then see how it goes.”

Aside from the joshing, the doctor wasn’t entirely off base. A hernia repair recovery period is one thing, but your job is another. If you work out of the home and especially out of the computer, and if you can prop yourself up, then there is really no need not to do something. If you haul around sacks of cement all day or pole vault for a living, you can forget about seeing action for probably six to eight weeks. I had to deal high-strung eight-year-olds, which was a high-risk occupation for anyone anytime, so I would have to wait and see.

And that was that. He stuck out his hand and said, “put it there”, which is not what I expected from a man who repairs digestive tracts, but what the heck, this was getting more surreal by the second, so I timidly shook it and departed shortly afterward.

My time there had been pleasant, but I was looking forward to seeing how I could handle it on my own.